The invention relates to the safe treatment and disposal of hazardous materials. The hazardous materials may be of any kind that cannot normally be handled or disposed of by conventional means. Such hazardous materials may include contaminated soil, construction debris, sludges, and other solid or semi-solid materials which contain toxic substances or toxic metals such as arsenic, lead, bismuth, and the like. The hazardous materials may also include sludges which may not be poisonous, but which present problems of disposal. Such sludges may be those resulting from the manufacture of paints or other filled coatings, including sludges from painting or plating operations. These sludges will contain solids admixed with binders, carriers, thinners, many or all of which may be inflammable materials not suitable for mere discharge into the normal water-treating systems.
The prior technology includes descriptions of incinerators such as those contained in U.S. Pat. No. 3,648,630-Hobbs et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 4,202,282-Hobbs et al. Whiles these and similar technologies are adapted to the incineration of sludges on a continuous basis, they are not adapted to treat a broad range of hazardous materials in an environmentally safe way.